Best Performing Footwear (2012)

Who needs a television show starring overpaid actors when you can watch sock puppets doing comedy? Mark Hayward and Charley Knapp's Sock Puppet Sitcom Theater brings to life your favorite sitcoms of yesteryear using nothing but socks, cloth, buttons and pipe cleaners. In March, the theater company and its eight puppeteers — almost all of whom are working actors, some who've done prominent voice-over work — began staging monthly shows reinterpreting the pilot episodes of sitcoms like Three's Company, I Love Lucy, Friends, Hogan's Heroes and Roseanne. Hayward and Knapp (Chicago transplants who go by the fur-covered aliases Frenchie and Glamor Puss, respectively) are sticklers for authenticity: For the I Love Lucy night, the sock-tors wore only muted colors to replicate the show's B&W look. The two even stage vintage commercials and use an opening band to play period songs. Hayward and Knapp began performing sock puppet shows five years ago in local spaces. Since then, they've moved from their old digs at Atwater Crossing in Atwater Village to the far edgier Echo. Socks have egos, too. 1822 W. Sunset Blvd., Echo Park. (213) 413-8200, sockpuppetsitcomtheater.com.